Voice of the People

Aim of training is to improve procurement

I appreciate your editorial (Dec. 24) highlighting the public auditor's report on procurement with GovGuam's 10 largest vendors. I encourage everyone to read the full report on OPA's website. It noted the 10 vendors account for 40 percent of procurement money spent by GovGuam, and that construction and consulting account for two-thirds of all of that. As for the reported results, note that they are based only on audit sampling; it does not purport to look into every procurement.

There are some interesting observations made, and to be made. One of the most telling is that GovGuam seems adept at properly procuring when federal funds are used, but not our own -- "99 percent of the questioned costs were associated with local funds."

The feds, of course, have forensic auditing and send people to jail for wrongful use of funds, or agencies lose their federal funds.

We have after-the-fact audit reports and no one gets slapped on the wrist, and money keeps getting thrown out the window. This particular audit report goes back to events three years past, and if history is any guide, it, too, will gather digital dust as it sits on the online bookshelf with all the other procurement audits on the website done over the last decade and more.

One point to be made, then, is these audits do not get results however much they may raise eyebrows. But compare that to protests. If the deficient procurements had been protested, timely decisions could have been rendered actually correcting the deficiencies found. If we cobble protests, and don't fiercely police the procurements, can we reasonably expect anything to improve?

You admonish, "local government officials need to take steps to address routine problems with procurement efforts to better ensure accountability and the public's trust in the process." I have been working closely with dedicated GCC continuing education staff to implement a Procurement Institute to provide training for participants in the procurement process to better understand and respond to the needs of the procurement process. This is intended to be a program offering 72 hours of education, in four "modules."

And this likely will be just the beginning of a more extensive training effort. If GCC's front office will simply follow through on its commitment to get legislation passed that repeals special legislation sneaked into a comprehensive re-enactment of its mission and goals last year, I will continue my efforts with them. This legislation, though, is highly destructive of the whole system of GovGuam procurement, and GCC can claim no mantle for procurement reform as long as this legislation remains in place.